AbstractThis paper deals with the effect of an internal explosion of cased ammunition on RC magazine structures. By means of a numerical approach, the main differences between the effect of a bare and cased charge are illustrated. A bottom-up strategy has been implemented which is based on modeling the single fragment impact, and enables to compute a complete structure. The simulations confirm the fact that the cased charge has a more destructive and localized effect than the bare charge. The study shows that the numerical erosion has a small overall effect on the response.